


How to Christmas: A Comprehensive Guide

by eleana007



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Christmas, Fluff, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 08:37:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5490773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleana007/pseuds/eleana007
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane, Roxy, Jake, and Dirk plan their first Christmas together. Or, Jake steals a tree, Dirk causes several separate explosions, Roxy is the best chemist and also the best chef, and Jane is in love with all of these idiots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Christmas: A Comprehensive Guide

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Capitola](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Capitola/gifts).



They had learned in November that cooking could not be a wholly collaborative process. The oven had to be replaced after Dirk’s modifications, they were still finding bits of mashed potato scattered around the house, and Jane had kicked the others out of the kitchen when Jake suggested that they measure ingredients for the various pies with intuition instead of measuring cups. The four of them each had their own unique ways of approaching a problem, and while that had been essential at one point in their lives (the long years before the game, and the impossible time during it), that was all in the past. 

“It’s not as if this is some sort of gargantuan final boss!” Jake exclaimed from his spot on their one overstuffed armchair. He gestured to the coffee table, where Dirk’s battle plan was spread across several sheets of paper. “It’s only preparing for Christmas, by Jove—why are you all so perturbed by the thought of working together, and making it up as we go?” When no response was forthcoming, he slumped back into the chair and crossed his arms. “Even if it is tricky, surely it’s an adventure worth having!” 

Jane sighed and looked up from the mess she had made of Roxy’s hair (the other girl was sprawled across their couch, with her head in Jane’s lap and her bare feet tucked under Dirk’s legs for warmth). Jake was looking at the three of them with kicked puppy eyes, and Jane bit her lip before answering him. 

“Jake, of course it is—no one’s saying we should cancel Christmas! It’s just…well, Dirk, how would you go about decorating the tree?” 

Dirk considered for a moment. “Some sort of automated system—feed a robot a blueprint of the tree, how much weight each branch can take, a list of all the ornaments we have. Maybe some aesthetic criteria too—no ornaments of the same color within two spots of each other, that sort of thing.” He turned his head to look at Jane, which was something of a concession—he still wore his shades most of the time (nothing but dead shields, with AR gone), but he had gotten much better about body language. “Why, I thought Jake was on tree duty?”

Jane looked back at Jake, and let out a snort at the affronted look he was shooting at Dirk. “Jake is on tree duty—I just thought it might help him understand why you two aren’t decorating the tree together.” 

“But you’re meant to do it by hand, and put everything where it feels the best! Surely none of your confounded machines could get it right.” 

Dirk opened his mouth to expound on how he could, in fact, set enough criteria in the programming that it imitated a human’s aesthetic sense. Then Roxy kicked him in the leg, and he shut his mouth again. She lifted her head off of Jane’s lap enough to turn and grin at Jake.

“And you’re the best at making things that feel good and right and all those other snug Christmas-y feelings, soooo you’ll do the tree!” Jake humphed, and Roxy went on, “Plus you’re the only one with the adventuring knowhow to find us the best tree in the city.” Jake lit up at this, but he still looked a bit unhappy.

“We will unveil all of our gifts together, yes? That doesn’t also require this dadblasted level of planning?” 

Roxy planted her face in Jane’s lap to smother her laugh and gave Jake a double-thumbs up. Then she went boneless again as Jane resumed combing warm fingers through her hair. 

* * *

The plan had been a simple one—too simple to really be expected to work. Originally, each of them would handle one aspect of the preparations. Roxy would handle the dinners (Dirk and Jane had thought that the important meal was the one on Christmas Eve, and Jake had been adamant that to be a Christmas dinner it had to be ON Christmas, so they were planning two feasts). Dirk would take care of decorations, and had also privately assigned himself the task of planning activities for Christmas Eve that would leave all four of them sufficiently exhausted (this was deemed necessary after Jane had admitted to a history of staying up all night on Christmas Eve, only to pass out as soon as presents were opened). Jake was specifically responsible for the tree—obtaining one, bringing it back to their little house in the suburbs, and decorating it with the wide variety of ornaments that each of them had contributed to the household (some from their old lives, some handmade during the game, some picked up at yard sales and street markets and department stores in the weeks leading up to Christmas). Jane would, of course, be in charge of the deserts—she had insisted that it was a completely different category from what Roxy was doing, and had been steadfast in her conviction that they would need plenty of delicious baked goods if it was to be a proper holiday.

It was a good plan, in theory.

Six days before Christmas, Jake showed up at the door with a tree three times his height. He was red from the cold and grinning from ear to ear, and Jane couldn’t even be mad—she just kissed him, and called the others outside, and they all brought the tree around to the back of the house and set it up in the yard. By the time they were done their hands were all sticky with sap, and then there was nothing for it but that they go take a nice relaxing bath together (when they won the game, when they all got out, they had kept enough valuable things with them that they could afford a house, and two Christmas dinners, and a bathtub big enough for four. They had earned it, many times over). Several hours later, after a lovely bath and an even lovelier repose in the big bedroom, Jake was sent out again to find a tree that could fit through the door.

Four days before Christmas, Dirk blew up his bedroom. This wasn’t an uncommon occurrence—he loved working with his robots and his hands, but no matter how much experience he had, sometimes the wrong wires just bumped each other. There was no serious damage to anything important (Dirk had taken to wearing proper protective gear after burning his eyebrows off during a collaboration with Roxy), but when his prototype holly/ribbon/light gun went, it took all of the holly/ribbons/lights with it. None of the four of them were particularly keen on trying to buy new decorations this close to the holiday (they hadn’t talked about it at first, how Dirk had to fight himself into staying still whenever he was in a crowd, or how the sight of a certain kind and color of hair would send Jake reaching for his absent pistols; but they’d started talking about it, and things were getting better). So instead of going out and buying new decorations Jane baked up several wintery gingerbread houses to put around the house, and Jake (after some cajoling) helped Roxy trim enough branches off of the large tree to comprise several suitably festive wreaths. Dirk was forbidden from building another decoration gun after Jane heard him muttering something about pyrotechnics, but he stripped down several of his old robots and jury-rigged a string of lights to bedeck the front of the house. 

Things went smoothly for the next few days--Jake had re-decorated the tree three times, but by Christmas Eve he had proudly declared it to be perfect. The four of them spent most of Christmas Eve sprawled around the tree together, talking and laughing and generally reveling in the certainty of another year. When the sun started to set, Roxy untangled herself from the pile that they’d ended up in and went to go make dinner.

And Jane hadn’t meant to interfere. She’d told herself that she wouldn’t get in the way, that of course Roxy could cook (she was a scientist, for Pete’s sake, she knew how to measure things). But a few minutes after Roxy got up, Jane excused herself to the bathroom; and when she was walking back to the living room, she stopped to peek into the kitchen; and when she saw Roxy using an honest-to-god balance to measure out flour, she couldn’t stop herself from laughing. 

Roxy spun around, a rare look of embarrassment on her face. “What are you laughing at?” Seeing Jane’s inability to respond, she crossed her arms and seriously considered sticking her tongue out. “You’re the one who said how important measurements are!”

And Jane had—that’d been the main argument during the Thanksgiving incident, with Jane trying to explain to Jake why specific measurements were so important in baking. But from the look of things, Roxy was just going to be adding the flour to a sautéed mushroom sauce—a feat that didn’t exactly require the level of scientific rigor that making perfectly rising pastries did.

Jane couldn’t articulate any of this, of course—she was too busy laughing—but she managed to choke out “but you’re measuring the flour! With a SCALE!” Roxy looked at Jane for a moment, looked at the flour, looked back at Jane. Then, in one fluid motion, she scooped up a handful of flour, crossed the kitchen in three long strides, and dumped the flour over Jane’s head.

Jane let out an outraged squeak, but Roxy had already fled to the other side of the kitchen, grinning from ear to ear. “Hey Janey, I think I get it now—it’s the flour that’s funny!” 

Things escalated quickly from there, to no one’s surprise. It took a grand total of thirty seconds for Jake and Dirk to realize something was happening, break up their own spontaneous makeouts, and rush to the kitchen. By the time they got there, Dirk had his phone out, and managed to get a good fifteen seconds of video of the girls rolling around on the floor trying to get each other as messy as possible. The battle ended with Jane straddling Roxy and dumping half of the bag of flour all over her while beaming victoriously. Jake, who had been about to join in for a good spot of wrestling, was somewhat disappointed that it was over so quickly; but then Jane was leaning down and kissing Roxy, and that was always such a sight that he couldn’t exactly complain. 

When Jane finally let Roxy up, they were both out of breath from more than just the brief wrestling match. And when Dirk proposed that they eat leftover Chinese and open one of the presents that night, no one even thought to protest. They’d have tomorrow for the proper Christmas—tonight could just be for them.

(The presents that they opened, ones that Dirk had planned on giving that night regardless of what else happened, turned out to be several sets of soft leather cuffs, accompanied by a promise to make whomever was wearing them come so hard that they’d see stars, and a variety of implements to help achieve that goal)

**Author's Note:**

> So it turns out that I'm thoroughly unable to write good vanilla smut, and I wasn't sure how non-vanilla you'd be comfortable with, so I leaned more on the fluff side of things. I hope you like it all right--I've never actually written Homestuck fanfiction before, so sorry if that shows!


End file.
